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Persuasive Speech Final Draft

I would like you all to take a moment and close
your eyes. Without opening them, raise your hand if you have ever been the
victim of bullying. Now raise your hand if you have ever been the bully.
Finally, raise your hand if you have ever watched someone being bullied.

You can open your eyes now.

We can all recall experiences involving bullying
whether we were the perpetrator, the victim, or a bystander and, chances are,
we're embarrassed about it. More recently, "cyberbullying" has taken
prevalence in the lives of teens and young adults. In order to put an end to
it, we must open our eyes and looking bullying right in the face.

Cyberbullying is when someone is tormented,
threatened, harassed, humiliated, or otherwise targeted by use of the internet,
digital technologies, or mobile phones. This can include anything from
harassment via text and instant messages to discussions on message boards or
blogs and even worse. As more and more student-aged children gain access to the
internet, the social aspect of school expands far beyond the buildings in which
they learn.

According to anti-bullying organizations,
cyberbullying doesn't exist once anyone older than eighteen is involved. Maybe
that's why this topic seems to be forgotten about after high school, and even
in some areas, middle school. The fact of the matter is, cyberbullying doesn't
just go away; it just takes on an uglier name with more severe consequences.

In elementary school we watched the nerds have
their lunch stolen or isolated from the 'in-crowd.' Movies like Mean
Girls takes us on a journey through the competitive halls of high
school in which people fight for popularity and acceptance from their peers.
But what happens to those that don't gain it? 'Burn Books' and photoshopped
flyers aren't the most realistic form of bullying anymore.

People, young adults most importantly, turn to
the internet to voice their opinions about anything and everything. The problem
with this freedom is that most young adults abuse what the internet has to
offer.

At Rutgers University just last semester,
students mourned the loss of one of their own: Tyler Clementi, whose death was
one of five suicides by homosexual teenagers in just three short weeks. Tyler
jumped off the George Washington Bridge days after his roommate posted a video
on the internet of him being intimate with another man. That same week,
13-year-old Seth Walsh hanged himself after facing cyber harassment for being
gay.

Sure, Tyler and Seth were different from their
classmates, but the hatred they faced was more than any schoolyard bully could
ever inflict.

Videos uploaded to Youtube can go viral within
hours, spanning to millions of viewers across the world. With just a click of a
mouse, words can be uploaded to a blog that can be then read by anyone with
access to the internet, reblogged, and circulated to reach larger audiences.
This takes bullying to a whole new level.

Children used to tease each other on playgrounds;
now they do it on websites, namely social networking services like Facebook and
Myspace.

Another difference that comes with the cyber
form of bullying is the opportunity for attack. Whereas bullying often took
place out of the eyes of authority figures during lunch or between classes,
cyber bullying can happen any minute of any day. Furthermore, these attacks can
be anonymous, repetitive, and difficult to ignore.

You might be thinking to yourself: we're in
college, this stuff doesn't happen anymore.

Think again.

CollegeACB (College Anonymous Confession Board)
is a website that allows students from more than 500 schools across the US to
post anonymous gossip, rumors, and discussions about people and college-related
activities. Penn State even has its own board on the site. You can surf through
the message boards to find posts about who has the most STD's in the freshman
class to which sorority girl is easiest to hook up with. After just five
minutes on website I found the names of three people I know along with rumors
and gossip that were horribly inaccurate. Don't believe me? Go home and run
your name through their database to see if anyone has anything to say about
you.

But it doesn't stop there. Sexting is something
most of us laugh at but, in reality, it's a serious issue. Sexting is the act
of sending sexually explicit messages or pictures, primarily between cell
phones. Though you might send a personal message or picture to someone, you'd
be surprised as to where it could end up. Last year the New York Times ran a
story about a 14-year-old girl who had sent a naked picture to her boyfriend
via text only to have it forwarded on and on until hundreds - maybe even
thousands - of people had seen her nude. Sexting is not illegal but it could
have serious consequences, especially if a minor is involved.

So what can we do about this issue? For
starters, we can begin to accept people for who and what they are. We are all
different so what makes any of us able to harass someone else? It's easy to
turn a blind eye to cyberbullying but you don't have to be a hero to save
someone's day. Report any harassment you might see on Facebook, blogs, or message
boards.

Also, be careful what you put on the internet.
Once you post something online, it is can never be completely private again.
Think about what you're saying before you hit the "enter" button because no
matter how many people "like" it, your words could be hurtful and hold severe
consequences.